FOI 7472-25 Road collisions 24-25
Request to Northamptonshire Police:
1. In the past year, how many car accidents took place? (Financial year 2024/25)
1a. Can this be broken down by accident causes such as speeding, drink-driving, icy roads etc?
1b. Can this be broken down by town (accidents in the towns that the force covers)?
2. What is the number of pedestrian casualties in reported road collisions in the past year? (Financial year 2024/25)
2a. Could these casualties be broken down into fatalities, serious injuries and minor injuries?
2b. Can this be broken down by town (accidents in the towns that the force covers)?
3. What is the number of pedal cyclist casualties in reported road collisions in the past year? (Financial year 2024/25)
3a. Could these casualties be broken down into fatalities, serious injuries and minor injuries?
3b. Can this be broken down by town (accidents in the towns that the force covers)?
4. In the past year, how many people were arrested following a traffic collision/accident and how many people were subsequently charged? (Financial year 2024/25)
Response:
Northamptonshire Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the production of statistical information for Freedom Of Information responses.
Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Northamptonshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
(a) states that fact,
(b) specifies the exemption in question and
(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
The exemption applicable to the information requested is:
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit
The information you are requesting is not held by Northamptonshire Police in any reasonably retrievable form. The only means of establishing 1a, 2a, and 3a would be by way of manual examination of each record. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is usually required to retrieve that information.
It is my assessment that the cost of providing you with the information requested would exceed the 'appropriate level' as set out in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
My assessment is that it would cost 2651 (number of records) x 2 minutes each (minimum) = over 88 hours at £25 per hour to respond to your request, which exceeds the 'appropriate limit' (currently £450 for 'prescribed costs').
In view of the above, and in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please take this letter as a Refusal Notice.
You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the costs shown above and is then within the 'appropriate limit' shown above. Information can be provided for 1, 1b, 2, 2b, 3, 3b and 4. Please submit a new request if this is required.
Where section 12 applies to a request, it should apply to the whole request, even where only one question would supersede the cost limit. The guidance from the ICO is that the decision on what is important is a matter for the requester and it is not for a public authority to assume what information they would like to receive inside the cost limit.
Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason, responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.